This invention relates to feed mechanisms for feeding laundry articles to laundry equipment for subsequent processing such as ironing machines, folding machines or the like. The expression "laundry article" is intended to encompass fabric articles such as sheets, pillow cases, towels, blankets and articles of clothing processed in laundries.
My U.S. Pat. No. 4,729,181 discloses a laundry feeding machine having a conveyor on which articles are fed after being held by a suction holding device at the front of the conveyor. Simultaneously with the release of the article from the suction holding device, suction is applied in the tunnel enclosing the conveyor, and this draws the leading part of the article onto the conveyor. The overall speed of operation of the machine is determined by the speed at which the valves controlling the suction applied to the holding device and the conveyor can be switched on and off and suction thus established at the respective zones.
It would be desirable to provide a more rapid operation than that which can be achieved with the disclosed machine, and it would also be desirable to reduce the complexity of the machine and thereby reduce its costs. This is particularly so in the case of multi-lane versions of the machine in which a wide conveyor has a row of said suction/holding devices by removable partitions spaced apart across the entry of the machine to be sued collectively (by linking all or certain of the devices together or individually) according to the width of the articles to be fed. This arrangement with the individual valve mechanisms for each suction/holding device and the need to isolate the vacuum applied to each of the suction/holding devices makes the machine as a whole unduly complex.
Frequently a long duct or streaming chamber is provided between the suction source and the entry passage of a feeding machine so that when the leading edge of a flat laundry article such as a sheet is emplaced on the conveyor, the trailing portion is drawn by suction into this elongated duct to be streamed out therein. Such ducts are typically configured to have relatively closely spaced major confronting walls and the opposite major faces of the streamed article are confronting the interior faces of these major walls. Conventional ducting arrangements do not provide for high speed air flow along both of the major faces of the article. This occurs in prior art designs because that portion of the article placed on the conveyor effectively blocks the flow of air from that portion into the duct, with the result that high speed air only flows through that portion of the duct closest t the operator, and thus does not provide optimal smoothing.